


Last Call

by DeathByDatura



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Reno is sweet deep down, Reti, Tifa is a queen, closeted romance, comfort without hurt, first time writing an actual one-shot, so deep down he isn't aware of it, super minor Cloti, unbeta'ed we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathByDatura/pseuds/DeathByDatura
Summary: Her life having been the mess it has, Tifa isn't surprised that her favorite customer is a murderous redhead.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Reno
Comments: 9
Kudos: 73





	Last Call

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me when this is set, I've no idea. I just wanted to write some Reti and this came out. Also, first time accomplishing to write a one-shot. I don't even know what's going on here, but I'm so proud of myself.

He always arrives during last call.

Reno doesn’t visit Seventh Heaven daily, but she has come to expect him several times a week. When he is joined by his fellow Turks they make it at a more decent hour, although they stay well past last call and leave afterward sitting a hefty tip on the bar and mumbling embarrassed apologies about whoever hurled this time. On his own, however, Reno always appears in the depth of night.

The rowdy laughter of her patrons subdues abruptly as she puts away clean glasses. She keeps one and turns around, strolling to the farthest corner of the bar, where he always sits. Reno prowls into the place, sharp eyes studying its current state of affairs, falling on each of the remaining patrons. Tifa’s customers hunch slightly, turn away their distrusting glances. Turks aren’t well received in the slums, but Tifa and Barret are the authority in Sector Seven and by granting them entrance they are giving them their blessing to roam their little corner of Midgar’s filthy streets freely. She picks up the expensive whiskey from the shelf, a brand she only orders for the Turks, and as she pours the amber infusion into the glass she can’t help but smile in amusement. Reno shoots a look at each patron, a reminder of last call, a bucket of ice-cold water poured onto them. At first Tifa believed that look to be disgust towards her neighbors and it made her clench her fists behind the counter and bite the inside of her cheek, but the more Reno came, the more insight she gained on his glares.

He calmly makes a beeline for his preferred seat tapping that stupid baton against his shoulder, chin raised, cockiness and confidence at once submerging her little bar in the menace of his presence. She is aware that Reno’s chaotic aura asphyxiates her customers as it occupies every single corner of the room, but she can’t bring herself to care enough to bar him entrance. Her shoulders drop, a sigh escapes her, tension releases her muscles. Where other people choke, she can breathe.

Reno slumps onto the stool, dropping the baton onto the counter like it’s not a lethal weapon, but a PHS or a wallet instead, and stretches his arms and rolls his shoulders. Tifa only realized he did that for her benefit when she first took notice of the way he examined her while he threw his shoulders back, putting his exposed chest in better display, like an animal engaging in a courtship ritual. Despite his remarkable attributes, and despite the fact that they do arouse certain reactions in her own anatomy, Tifa always ends up worrying about him getting cold instead. She pushes the glass towards him. He catches it on reflex.

As Tifa continues to calmly close up shop, she sees from the corner of her eye Reno shooting a last warning look to the remaining patrons, as usual. “Last call, fellas; the barmaid’s attention is mine now,” he says without words. He lays his claims, vindicates his territory, asserts his dominance. It’s his prerogative. Tifa has made it so.

In the following twenty minutes Tifa’s customers drip out one by one, wishing her a good night and eying Reno with mistrust, but Reno doesn’t care enough to stop staring at her rear as she goes about the place, wiping tables and sweeping the floor.

Once alone Reno gets up, picks up the remaining glasses from the counter, and leans over it to sit them in the sink before taking back his seat. Tifa gives the glasses a quick rinse and places them with care in the dishwasher.

‘When you gon’ ban that fat-ass from here?’

‘Everybody stares at my chest, Reno,’ Tifa answers, shutting the dishwasher closed and pressing the start button.

‘Not like he does, yo.’

She knows what Reno means, but since men have sexualized her her entire life because of her assets, Tifa doesn’t sweat it. It’s just another Tuesday, and it’s not like she can’t defend herself. Tifa leans back against the counter and smiles.

‘How is the way he looks at me worse than yours?’

Reno snorts and takes a sip of his drink.

‘I, for one, am fully aware that you could punch me into my golden years.’

‘I’m sorry, I hadn’t taken your courage into consideration.’

‘I’d die a hero,’ he deadpans.

Tifa shakes her head and rolls her eyes, but she can’t help but smile.

‘You let me know if he’s a problem, yo.’

“I’ll become his problem,” it’s what he doesn’t need to say.

‘You know,’ Tifa says, stepping ahead and leaning with her elbows on the bar. ‘Last time someone was a problem, you kinda sat back and watched.’

‘You’d it under control,’ Reno says, shrugging and taking another sip. ‘‘Sides, it’s your own fault I’d rather kick back.’

‘How’s that my fault?’

‘Tifa Lockhart bashin’ someone’s brains in? Hot, yo.’

‘I’d forgotten about your kinks.’

‘You’re real forgetful tonight, Teef,’ he says, then looks at her over the rim of the glass. ‘I’d have jumped in if I’d thought you couldn’t handle it.’

‘I know, Reno,’ she says, because she does. ‘Thank you. You’re real sweet.’

He puts down the glass and stares at her in outrage.

‘I ain’t sweet. You take that back, woman.’

Tifa turns around laughing. She punches the register open and proceeds with the cash count. Reno drinks silently behind her.

It says something about her life that she finds peace and comfort in the company of a former sworn enemy and hitman. They left behind a lot after Meteor, and what couldn’t be left behind they tiptoe around, try not to hurt each other. Tifa doesn’t forget that it was Reno’s finger on the trigger that dropped the plate of the former Sector Seven, that he was responsible for her friends’ deaths. She doesn’t forget that it was, ultimately, Shinra Inc responsible for her best friend’s death, for her childhood friend’s brutal trauma, for all of her friends’ tragedies, homes and families and loves and dreams razed to the ground at the hands of greed.

They have moved past that. They had no other choice. Or at least Tifa felt she had no choice. She couldn’t let resentment devour her like it did after Nibelheim burned. It only birthed and nurtured regret and more grief, and she’s had enough of that.

When she locks her earnings in the safe Reno drinks the last of his whiskey and leans over the counter again to sit the glass into the sink. He stands up as she switches off the outdoor and most of the indoor lighting, stretches and rolls his shoulders again. Tifa allows her eyes to fall on his chest for a second, and Reno smirks without looking at her. She rolls her eyes. Tifa picks up the mop, which cues him to start gathering chairs and stools. He deposits them upside down on the tables while Tifa wipes the floor clean with the exception of the path from the front door to the back door that leads to the upstairs apartment. Reno steps outside, and when she’s done she does the same.

Reno is leaning back against the wall, ever cool with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the uneven constructions of the slums, barely illuminated by a surprisingly-still-functional streetlight here and there. His shoulders slouch down, no trace of the ever present shrewdness in his eyes, the cocky smirk fallen from his lips. Tifa never knew how alert he always kept himself until she first saw him like this. She is the only one who has. Or that she believes.

‘There,’ she says, leaning against the door frame. ‘You don’t have to save me from any troublemakers.’

Reno smiles. A smile, not a smirk. She thinks she’s the only one to have ever witnessed that, too.

‘Good,’ he says, chuckling. ‘Wouldn’t want your pretty hands to bruise, yo.’

‘If you didn’t want that, you wouldn’t let me be a barmaid.’

He snorts a laugh. They both know she’s only here because she has nowhere else to go.

‘Without belittling the grandiosity of your ‘hood here,’ he says, nodding towards the scenery, ‘you’d live like a queen on a Turk salary.’

‘I think I’ll pass,’ she says, chuckling.

‘Think about it though. Rude’d bend over backwards at the suggestion alone, yo. I love the guy, but he’s a fucking amateur at disguising his crushes.’

‘He should take tips from the pros,’ Tifa says, arching an eyebrow at him.

Reno grins, wolfish, devilish.

‘Cloud was no better, yo. Good fucking god, he sucked at that. You’re better off without him.’

‘Maybe,’ she says, noncommittal, despite both of them knowing that she and Cloud have become better friends than they were ever lovers.

‘You really gotta stop surrounding yourself with losers, Teef,’ he says. ‘Girl like you, you could’ve anyone.’

‘Someone on a Turk salary wouldn’t be too shabby.’

‘There’s so few of us left though,’ Reno says, shrugging with dramatic air. ‘And not a whole lotta options amongst us either. Other than Rude, you can’t make Tseng any less gay for Rufus—’

‘Hey, I thought that was a secret you couldn’t disclose,’ Tifa points out, giggling. He snorts.

‘You mean like they ain’t broadcasting their gayness all over fucking Midgar, yo? You’d think someone as loaded as Rufus could get a room more often instead of lettin’ us walk in on them in the fucking office every other day.’

‘Turks’ lives sound really rough.’

‘You don’t know the half of it. Fuck all,’ he says with a lopsided smile. ‘And then you’ve got Elena, which, if you could handle her chaotic lesbian energy and weren’t painfully straight, you’d be golden.’

‘And then there’s you,’ Tifa says, ignoring the heat crawling up her neck, but watching him closely.

Reno snorts, his half smile brightening with amusement.

‘‘Lena’s gay energy got nothin’ on mine, yo. I don’t think you could handle that.’

‘I think I handle you just fine,’ she says, smugly raising her chin.

‘Heh. So what’re you proposin’ here?’

Reno turns to lean with his shoulder against the wall and looks at her with that devilish smirk of his, sharp blue-green on blood red. Tifa presses her lips, which does nothing to conceal her smile, and ignores the flutter in her chest, the heat crawling up her cheeks, ignores that she’s probably turned red under his scrutiny. She turns to lean with her back against the wall instead and looks out at the deserted streets, opting for playful.

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. I don’t think you could handle it,’ she shrugs, trying not to giggle.

Reno chuckles. She watches him from the corner of her eye, sees his sly smile, sees him bite his lips. He huffs and pushes himself off of the wall. As he walks past her he leans in, close enough that Tifa feels his warm breath on her nose and the whiff of whiskey in it. Her skin stands on end, something unfurling in her belly.

‘Forgettin’ ‘bout my courage again, I see.’

Tifa shudders as he pulls away. She huffs, amused, as he climbs down the front steps of Seventh Heaven, and uselessly commands her body to calm down.

‘So when are you growing a pair, then?’ she calls.

Reno barks a laugh and turns to face her without stopping, so that he’s walking backwards. He shoots her a mischievous smirk.

‘When you’re ready for the ride.’

He winks at her, which triggers another flutter in her chest, and faces forward again. Tifa giggles to herself, watching Reno lose himself in the darkness under the plate.


End file.
